January 2025

High-performance STT-MRAM developer Numem announced that it expects to start samplings its MRAM chipsets, to enable non-volatile, high-speed and ultra-low power solutions to chip designers.

Numem says that the company's chiplets deliver up to 4TB/sper 8-die memory stack, exceeding existing AI memoryHBM solutions.  It supports 4GB per stack package, and is optimized for AI applications across OEMs and hyperscalers.

The Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC) has awarded $100,000 to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to expand the MRAM research conducted by Dr. Jayasimha Atulasimha

Atulasimha’s group is developing skyrmion-mediated MRAM (SkMRAM), a nanomagnet-based RAM technique that builds upon STT-MRAM technology while significantly improving energy efficiency. By adding a layer of heavy metal to STT-MRAM, energy consumption is reduced by 100-1000x, or 2-3 orders of magnitude. The resulting product is non-volatile, meaning that it can retain data even when the device is powered off, and has a very low write-errors rate, which means that it saves energy while writing information. It also doesn’t require standby power to retain information and is reliable. One patent currently covers this technology.

Vertןcal Compute, a new startup that was spun-off from the imec institute to commercialize its MRAM technology for AI applications, has raised 20 million Euro. The seed round was led by imec.xpand and supported by Eurazeo, XAnge, Vector Gestion, and imec.

The company says that it will develop an MRAM in-memory computing chiplet technology. The chiplet, according to the company, can reduce power consumption by 80% and speed up the execution of large language models for AI by 100X. It is believed that the company's MRAM is based on SOT-MRAM technology.

Researchers from Osaka University developed a new MRAM device architecture that enables an electric-field-based writing scheme with reduced energy consumption compared to the present current-based approach.

The researchers have developed a new component for electric field control of MRAM devices, with the key innovation being a multiferroic heterostructure with magnetization vectors that can be switched by an electric field. The researchers also demonstrate that two different magnetic states can be reliably realized at zero electric field by changing the sweeping operation of the electric field. This means a non-volatile binary state can be intentionally achieved at zero electric field.